Turks arrived from Central Asia and settled in the Anatolian basin in around the 11th century through the conquest of Seljuk Turks, mixing with the peoples of Anatolia. The region then began to transform from a predominately Greek Christian one to a Turkish Muslim society.[81] Thereafter, the Ottoman Empire came to rule much of the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East (excluding Iran), and North Africa over the course of several centuries, with an advanced army and navy. The Empire lasted until the end of the First World War, when it was defeated by the Allies and partitioned. Following the successful Turkish War of Independence that ended with the Turkish national movement retaking most of the land lost to the Allies, the movement abolished the Ottoman sultanate on 1 November 1922 and proclaimed the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. Not all Ottomans were Muslims and not all Ottoman Muslims were Turks, but by 1923, the majority of people living within the borders of the new Turkish republic identified as Turks.

Article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a "Turk" as "anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship"; therefore, the legal use of the term "Turkish" as a citizen of Turkey is different from the ethnic definition.[82][83] However, the majority of the Turkish population are of Turkish ethnicity and are estimated at 70–75 percent.[84]

Etymology and ethnic identity

The ethnonym "Turk" may be first discerned in Herodotus' (c. 484–425 BC) reference to Targitas, first king of the Scythians;[85] furthermore, during the first century AD., Pomponius Mela refers to the "Turcae" in the forests north of the Sea of Azov, and Pliny the Elder lists the "Tyrcae" among the people of the same area.[85] The first definite references to the "Turks" come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century. In these sources, "Turk" appears as "Tujue" (Chinese: 突厥; Wade–Giles: T’u-chüe), which referred to the Göktürks.[86][87] Although "Turk" refers to Turkish people, it may also sometimes refer to the wider language group of Turkic peoples.[citation needed]

In the 19th century, the word Türk only referred to Anatolian villagers. The Ottoman ruling class identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks.[88] In the late 19th century, as the Ottoman upper classes adopted European ideas of nationalism the term Türk took on a much more positive connotation.[89] The Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule.[citation needed]

During Ottoman times, the millet system defined communities on a religious basis, and a residue of this remains in that Turkish villagers commonly consider as Turks only those who profess the Sunni faith. Turkish Jews, Christians, or even Alevis may be considered non-Turks.[90] On the other hand, Kurdish followers of the Sunni branch of Islam who live in eastern Anatolia were sometimes considered "Mountain Turks".[91]Article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a "Turk" as anyone who is "bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship."[92] It is believed by Robert Fisk that circa two million Turks may have an Armenian grandmother.[93]

In Central Asia, the earliest surviving Turkic-language texts, the eighth-century Orkhon inscriptions, were erected by the Göktürks in the sixth century CE, and include words not common to Turkic but found in unrelated Inner Asian languages.[97] Although the ancient Turks were nomadic, they traded wool, leather, carpets, and horses for wood, silk, vegetables and grain, as well as having large ironworking stations in the south of the Altai Mountains during the 600s CE. Most of the Turkic peoples were followers of Tengrism, sharing the cult of the sky god Tengri, although there were also adherents of Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism.[98][85] However, during the Muslim conquests, the Turks entered the Muslim world proper as servants, during the booty of Arab raids and conquests.[85] The Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian and Central Asian culture. Under the Umayyads, most were domestic servants, whilst under the Abbasid Caliphate, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers.[85] By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle. As the Abbasid Caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power taking over or establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops.[85]

In dire straits, the Byzantine Empire turned to the West for help setting in motion the pleas that led to the First Crusade.[103] Once the Crusaders took Iznik, the Seljuk Turks established the Sultanate of Rum from their new capital, Konya, in 1097.[100] By the 12th century the Europeans had begun to call the Anatolian region "Turchia" or "Turkey", meaning "the land of the Turks".[104] The Turkish society of Anatolia was divided into urban, rural and nomadic populations;[105] the other Turkoman (Turkmen) tribes who had also swept into Anatolia at the same time as the Seljuk Turks were those who kept their nomadic ways.[100] These tribes were more numerous than the Seljuk Turks, and rejecting the sedentary lifestyle, adhered to an Islam impregnated with animism and shamanism from their central Asian steppeland origins, which then mixed with new Christian influences. From this popular and syncretist Islam, with its mystical and revolutionary aspects, sects such as the Alevis and Bektashis emerged.[100] Furthermore, the intermarriage between the Turks and local inhabitants, as well as the conversion of many to Islam, also increased the Turkish-speaking Muslim population in Anatolia.[100][106]

By 1243, at the Battle of Köse Dağ, the Mongols defeated the Seljuk Turks and became the new rulers of Anatolia, and in 1256, the second Mongol invasion of Anatolia caused widespread destruction. Particularly after 1277, political stability within the Seljuk territories rapidly disintegrated, leading to the strengthening of Turkoman principalities in the western and southern parts of Anatolia called the "beyliks".[107]

Beyliks era

Once the Seljuk Turks were defeated by the Mongols' conquest of Anatolia, the Turks became the vassal of the Ilkhans who established their own empire in the vast area stretching from present-day Afghanistan to present-day Turkey.[108] As the Mongols occupied more lands in Asia Minor, the Turks moved further to western Anatolia and settled in the Seljuk-Byzantine frontier.[108] By the last decades of the 13th century, the Ilkhans and their Seljuk vassals lost control over much of Anatolia to these Turkoman peoples.[108] A number of Turkish lords managed to establish themselves as rulers of various principalities, known as "Beyliks" or emirates. Amongst these beyliks, along the Aegean coast, from north to south, stretched the beyliks of Karasi, Saruhan, Aydin, Menteşe and Teke. Inland from Teke was Hamid and east of Karasi was the beylik of Germiyan.

To the north-west of Anatolia, around Söğüt, was the small and, at this stage, insignificant, Ottoman beylik. It was hemmed in to the east by other more substantial powers like Karaman on Iconium, which ruled from the Kızılırmak River to the Mediterranean. Although the Ottomans were only a small principality among the numerous Turkish beyliks, and thus posed the smallest threat to the Byzantine authority, their location in north-western Anatolia, in the former Byzantine province of Bithynia, became a fortunate position for their future conquests. The Latins, who had conquered the city of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, established a Latin Empire (1204–61), divided the former Byzantine territories in the Balkans and the Aegean among themselves, and forced the Byzantine Emperors into exile at Nicaea (present-day Iznik). From 1261 onwards, the Byzantines were largely preoccupied with regaining their control in the Balkans.[108] Toward the end of the 13th century, as Mongol power began to decline, the Turcoman chiefs assumed greater independence.[109]

Under its founder, Osman I, the nomadic Ottoman beylik expanded along the Sakarya River and westward towards the Sea of Marmara. Thus, the population of western Asia Minor had largely become Turkish-speaking and Muslim in religion.[108] It was under his son, Orhan I, who had attacked and conquered the important urban center of Bursa in 1326, proclaiming it as the Ottoman capital, that the Ottoman Empire developed considerably. In 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and established a foothold on the Gallipoli Peninsula while at the same time pushing east and taking Ankara.[110][111] Many Turks from Anatolia began to settle in the region abandoned by the inhabitants who had fled Thrace before the Ottoman invasion.[112] However, the Byzantines were not the only ones to suffer from the Ottoman advancement for, in the mid-1330s, Orhan annexed the Turkish beylik of Karasi. This advancement was maintained by Murad I who more than tripled the territories under his direct rule, reaching some 100,000 square miles (260,000 km2), evenly distributed in Europe and Asia Minor.[113] Gains in Anatolia were matched by those in Europe; once the Ottoman forces took Edirne (Adrianople), which became the capital of the Ottoman Empire in 1365, they opened their way into Bulgaria and Macedonia in 1371 at the Battle of Maritsa.[114] With the conquests of Thrace, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, significant numbers of Turkish emigrants settled in these regions.[112] This form of Ottoman-Turkish colonization became a very effective method to consolidate their position and power in the Balkans. The settlers consisted of soldiers, nomads, farmers, artisans and merchants, dervishes, preachers and other religious functionaries, and administrative personnel.[115]

Throughout the 1920s and the 1930s, Turks, as well as other Muslims, from the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Aegean islands, the island of Cyprus, the Sanjak of Alexandretta (Hatay), the Middle East, and the Soviet Union continued to arrive in Turkey, most of whom settled in urban north-western Anatolia.[134][135] The bulk of these immigrants, known as "Muhacirs", were the Balkan Turks who faced harassment and discrimination in their homelands.[134] However, there were still remnants of a Turkish population in many of these countries because the Turkish government wanted to preserve these communities so that the Turkish character of these neighbouring territories could be maintained.[136] One of the last stages of ethnic Turks immigrating to Turkey was between 1940 and 1990 when about 700,000 Turks arrived from Bulgaria. Today, between a third and a quarter of Turkey's population are the descendants of these immigrants.[135]

Geographic distribution

Traditional areas of Turkish settlement

In the latter half of the 11th century, the Seljuks began settling in the eastern regions of Anatolia. In 1071, the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert, beginning the enlargement of their empire and sphere of influence in Anatolia; the Turkish language and Islam were introduced to Anatolia and gradually spread over the region.[137] The slow transition from a predominantly Christian and Greek-speaking Anatolia to a predominantly Muslim and Turkish-speaking one was underway.[138]

The Turkish Cypriots are the ethnic Turks whose Ottoman Turkish forebears colonised the island of Cyprus in 1571. About 30,000 Turkish soldiers were given land once they settled in Cyprus, which bequeathed a significant Turkish community. In 1960, a census by the new Republic's government revealed that the Turkish Cypriots formed 18.2% of the island's population.[139] However, once inter-communal fighting and ethnic tensions between 1963 and 1974 occurred between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots, known as the "Cyprus conflict", the Greek Cypriot government conducted a census in 1973, albeit without the Turkish Cypriot populace. A year later, in 1974, the Cypriot government’s Department of Statistics and Research estimated the Turkish Cypriot population was 118,000 (or 18.4%).[140] A coup d'état in Cyprus on 15 July 1974 by Greeks and Greek Cypriots favouring union with Greece (also known as "Enosis") was followed by military intervention by Turkey whose troops established Turkish Cypriot control over the northern part of the island.[141] Hence, census's conducted by the Republic of Cyprus have excluded the Turkish Cypriot population that had settled in the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.[140] Between 1975 and 1981, Turkey encouraged its own citizens to settle in Northern Cyprus; a report by CIA suggests that 200,000 of the residents of Cyprus are Turkish.

Compared to Turkish immigration to Europe, migration to North America has been relatively small. According to the US Census Bureau and Statistics Canada, 196,222 Americans in 2013[18] and 24,910 Canadians in 2011[30] were of Turkish descent. However, the actual number of Turks in both countries is considerably larger, as a significant number of ethnic Turks have migrated to North America not just from Turkey but also from the Balkans (such as Bulgaria and Macedonia), Cyprus, and the former Soviet Union.[149] Hence, the Turkish American community is currently estimated to number about 500,000[21][19] while the Turkish Canadian community is believed to number between 50,000–100,000. The largest concentration of Turkish Americans are in New York City, and Rochester, New York; Washington, D.C.; and Detroit, Michigan. The majority of Turkish Canadians live in Ontario, mostly in Toronto, and there is also a sizable Turkish community in Montreal, Quebec. With regards to the 2010 United States Census, the U.S government was determined to get an accurate count of the American population by reaching segments, such as the Turkish community, that are considered hard to count, a good portion of which falls under the category of foreign-born immigrants.[20] The Assembly of Turkish American Associations and the US Census Bureau formed a partnership to spearhead a national campaign to count people of Turkish origin with an organisation entitled "Census 2010 SayTurk" (which has a double meaning in Turkish, "Say" means "to count" and "to respect") to identify the estimated 500,000 Turks now living in the United States.[20]

A notable scale of Turkish migration to Australia began in the late 1940s when Turkish Cypriots began to leave the island of Cyprus for economic reasons, and then, during the Cyprus conflict, for political reasons, marking the beginning of a Turkish Cypriot immigration trend to Australia.[150] The Turkish Cypriot community were the only Muslims acceptable under the White Australia Policy;[151] many of these early immigrants found jobs working in factories, out in the fields, or building national infrastructure.[152] In 1967, the governments of Australia and Turkey signed an agreement to allow Turkish citizens to immigrate to Australia.[153] Prior to this recruitment agreement, there were fewer than 3,000 people of Turkish origin in Australia.[154] According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, nearly 19,000 Turkish immigrants arrived from 1968 to 1974.[153] They came largely from rural areas of Turkey, approximately 30% were skilled and 70% were unskilled workers.[155] However, this changed in the 1980s when the number of skilled Turks applying to enter Australia had increased considerably.[155] Over the next 35 years the Turkish population rose to almost 100,000.[154] More than half of the Turkish community settled in Victoria, mostly in the north-western suburbs of Melbourne.[154] According to the 2006 Australian Census, 59,402 people claimed Turkish ancestry;[156] however, this does not show a true reflection of the Turkish Australian community as it is estimated that between 40,000 and 120,000 Turkish Cypriots[157][158][159][160] and 150,000 to 200,000 mainland Turks[161][162] live in Australia. Furthermore, there has also been ethnic Turks who have migrated to Australia from Bulgaria,[163]Greece,[164]Iraq,[165] and the Republic of Macedonia.[164]

The Turkish presence in the Meskheti region of Georgia began with the Turkish military expedition of 1578.[166] However, due to the ordered deportation of over 115,000 Meskhetian Turks from their homeland in 1944, during the Second World War, the majority settled in Central Asia.[167] According to the 1989 Soviet Census, which was the last Soviet Census, 106,000 Meskhetian Turks lived in Uzbekistan, 50,000 in Kazakhstan, and 21,000 in Kyrgyzstan.[167] However, in 1989, the Meshetian Turks who had settled in Uzbekistan became the target of a pogrom in the Fergana valley, which was the principal destination for Meskhetian Turkish deportees, after an uprising of nationalism by the Uzbeks.[167] The riots had left hundreds of Turks dead or injured and nearly 1,000 properties were destroyed; thus, thousands of Meskhetian Turks were forced into renewed exile.[167] The majority of Meskhetian Turks, about 70,000, went to Azerbaijan, whilst the remainder went to various regions of Russia (especially Krasnodar Krai), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.[167][168] Soviet authorities recorded many Meskhetian Turks as belonging to other nationalities such as "Azeri", "Kazakh", "Kyrgyz", and "Uzbek".[167][169] Hence, official census's have not shown a true reflection of the Turkish population; for example, according to the 2009 Azerbaijani census, there were 38,000 Turks living in the country;[170] yet in 1999, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated that there were 100,000 Meskhetian Turks living in the country.[171] Furthermore, in 2001, the Baku Institute of Peace and Democracy suggested that there was between 90,000 and 110,000 Meskhetian Turks living in Azerbaijan.[66]

As Turkey successfully transformed from the religion-based former Ottoman Empire into a modern nation-state with a very strong separation of state and religion, an increase in the modes of artistic expression followed. During the first years of the republic, the government invested a large amount of resources into fine arts; such as museums, theatres, opera houses and architecture. Diverse historical factors play important roles in defining the modern Turkish identity. Turkish culture is a product of efforts to be a "modern" Western state, while maintaining traditional religious and historical values.[174] The mix of cultural influences is dramatized, for example, in the form of the "new symbols of the clash and interlacing of cultures" enacted in the works of Orhan Pamuk, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.[175]

One important change to Turkish literature was enacted in 1928, when Mustafa Kemal initiated the creation and dissemination of a modified version of the Latin alphabet to replace the Arabic alphabet based Ottoman script. Over time, this change, together with changes in Turkey's system of education, would lead to more widespread literacy in the country.[179] Modern standard Turkish is based on the dialect of Istanbul.[180] Nonetheless, dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s.[181] The terms ağız or şive often refer to the different types of Turkish dialects.

There are three major Anatolian Turkish dialect groups spoken in Turkey: the West Anatolian dialect (roughly to the west of the Euphrates), the East Anatolian dialect (to the east of the Euphrates), and the North East Anatolian group, which comprises the dialects of the Eastern Black Sea coast, such as Trabzon, Rize, and the littoral districts of Artvin.[182][183] The Balkan Turkish dialects are considerably closer to standard Turkish and do not differ significantly from it, despite some contact phenomena, especially in the lexicon.[184] In the post-Ottoman period, Cypriot Turkish was relatively isolated from standard Turkish and had strong influences by the Cypriot Greek dialect. The condition of coexistence with the Greek Cypriots led to a certain bilingualism whereby Turkish Cypriots knowledge of Greek was important in areas where the two communities lived and worked together.[185] The linguistic situation changed radically in 1974, when the island was divided into a Greek south and a Turkish north (Northern Cyprus). Today, the Cypriot Turkish dialect is being exposed to increasing standard Turkish through immigration from Turkey, new mass media, and new educational institutions.[178] The Meskhetian Turks speak an Eastern Anatolian dialect of Turkish, which hails from the regions of Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin.[186] The Meskhetian Turkish dialect has also borrowed from other languages (including Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek), which the Meskhetian Turks have been in contact with during the Russian and Soviet rule.[186]

According to KONDA research, only 9.7% of the population described themselves as "fully devout," while 52.8% described themselves as "religious."[197] 69.4% of the respondents reported that they or their wives cover their heads (1.3% reporting chador), although this rate decreases in several demographics: 53% in ages 18–28, 27.5% in university graduates, 16.1% in masters-or-higher-degree holders.[73] Turkey has also been a secular state since the republican era.[198] According to a poll, 90% of respondents said the country should be defined as secular in the new Constitution that is being written.[199]

Genetics

The extent to which gene flow from Central Asia's original Turkic peoples has contributed to the current gene pool of the Turkish people of Turkey, and the question regarding the role of the 11th century settlements by Turkic people in Anatolia, has been the subject of various studies. Previous studies concluded that pre-Turkified, pre-Islamized groups are the primary genetic source of the present-day Turks of Turkey (i.e. Turkish people).[200][201]k[›][202][203][204][205] A study in 2003 looking into allele frequencies suggested that there was a lack of genetic relationship between the Mongols and modern Anatolian Turks, despite the historical relationship of their languages (The Turks and Germans were equally distant to all three Mongolian populations).[206] According to American Journal of Physical Anthropology (2008), today's Turkish people are more closely related with Balkan populations than to the Central Asian populations,[207]

The recent studies, however, mention a mixed heritage. For example, the study about autosomal dna of Turks in 2014 by Can Alkan found that the East Asian impact on modern Turkey was 21.7%[208] and a Y-DNA study in 2017 by Heraclides shows that the Turkish population of Anatolia is a hybrid population comprising the original Anatolians, Turkic peoples and other ethnicities from regions that the Ottomans controlled.[209] A study in 2015 found that "Previous genetic studies have generally used Turks as representatives of ancient Anatolians. Our results show that Turks are genetically shifted towards Central Asians, a pattern consistent with a history of mixture with populations from this region"[210]

A study involving mitochondrial analysis of a Byzantine-era population, whose samples were gathered from excavations in the archaeological site of Sagalassos, found that the Byzantine population of Sagalassos might have left a genetic signature in the modern Turkish populations.[211] Modern-day samples from the nearby town of Ağlasun showed that lineages of East Eurasian descent assigned to macro-haplogroup M were found in the modern samples from Ağlasun. This haplogroup is significantly more frequent in Ağlasun (15%) than in Byzantine Sagalassos.[212] One study found that results pointed out that language (Turkish) in Anatolia might not have been replaced by the elites, but by a large group of people, which means there was no elite assimilation in Anatolia.[213] Another study found the Circassians are closest to the Turkish population among sampled European (French, Italian, Sardinian), Middle Eastern (Druze, Palestinian), and Central (Kyrgyz, Hazara, Uygur), South (Pakistani), and East Asian (Mongolian, Han) populations.[214]

Y-DNA haplogroup distributions in Turkey

According to Cinnioglu et al., (2004)[215] there are many Y-DNA haplogroups present in Turkey. Some of the percentages identified were:[203]

J2=24% – J2 (M172)[203] Typical of the West Mediterranean, Caucasian, Western, Central Asia and South Asia.

R1b=14.7%[203] Widespread in western Eurasia, with distinct 'west Asian' and 'west European' lineages.

G=10.9%[203] – Typical of people from the Caucasus and to a lesser extent the Middle East, southern parts of Central Asia, and Europe.

E3b-M35=10.7%[203] (E3b1-M78 and E3b3-M123 accounting for all E representatives in the sample, besides a single E3b2-M81 chromosome). E-M78 occurs commonly, and is found in northern and eastern Africa, western Asia.[216]Haplogroup E-M123 is found in both Africa and Eurasia.

J1=9%[203] – Typical amongst people from the Arabian Peninsula and Dagestan (ranging from 3% from Turks around Konya to 12% in Kurds).

R1a=6.9%[203] – Common in various Central Asian, South Asian, and Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European populations.

I=5.3%[203] – Common in Scandinavia, Sardinia, among Kurds and Eastern Europe.